On Demand movie highlights

Share via e-mail

Wicker Park

★★½

(Showtime on Comcast) Movies this entertainingly nuts don’t come around very often, and when they do they should be given their due. Josh Hartnett plays a Chicago yuppie who obsessively stalks an old flame (Diane Kruger) before getting sidetracked by a woman (Rose Byrne) with the same name. A jazzy visual style, a great indie-pop soundtrack, and Matthew Lillard giving unnerving shadings to the stock best-friend part almost make you forget it’s trash. Almost. (PG-13; runs through May 20)

True Grit

★★½

(Free on Comcast) Less a Charles Bronson thriller than a straightforward western. It’s spiced with the sort of comedy one expects from Joel and Ethan Coen and driven by the kind of sincerity one doesn’t. Jeff Bridges plays alcoholic US marshal Reuben “Rooster” Cogburn, hired by a deadly serious 14-year-old (Hailee Steinfeld) to capture the man (Josh Brolin) who killed her father. This isn’t a rousing movie as much as a reassurance. With a perfectly hammy Matt Damon as a Texas Ranger. (PG-13; runs through May 31)

Wesley Morris

Real Steel

★★★

(Free on Comcast) In some not-too-terribly-distant future, the public gathers to watch great big robots beat the screws out of each other, while we watch Hugh Jackman and a kid named Dakota Goyo play father and son with a lot of razzle-dazzle. They train an underdog robot. You know the rest. Yet you don’t know how entertaining the rest actually is until it’s happening to you. (PG; runs through May 31)